When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him all over again. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives, a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.

My Man Jeeves

A new Jeeves audiobook is cause for celebration, especially when the stories are not available in print. This hilarious installment of the inimitable manservant Jeeves and his twit of an employer, Bertie Wooster, includes the earliest stories written by the master of the pen, prank, and pun. The stories are woven together with original material performed by Martin Jarvis.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the "country-place" of John's autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe - she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man 20 years her junior. When Emily's sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings recruits an old friend, now retired, to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance into the pages of crime literature.

Wishful Drinking

In Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher tells the true and intoxicating story of her life with inimitable wit. Born to celebrity parents, she was picked to play a princess in a little movie called Star Wars when only 19 years old. "But it isn't all sweetness and light sabers."

A Day's Read

Join three literary scholars and award-winning professors as they introduce you to dozens of short masterpieces that you can finish - and engage with - in a day or less. Perfect for people with busy lives who still want to discover-or rediscover-just how transformative an act of reading can be, these 36 lectures range from short stories of fewer than 10 pages to novellas and novels of around 200 pages. Despite their short length, these works are powerful examinations of the same subjects and themes that longer "great books" discuss.

Neverwhere

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but shrewish fiancée. Then one night he stumbles upon a girl lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He stops to help her, and his life is changed forever. Soon he finds himself living in a London most people would never have dreamed of: a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels. It is a world that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations.

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

From the unique perspective of David Sedaris comes a new collection of essays taking his listeners on a bizarre and stimulating world tour. From the perils of French dentistry to the eating habits of the Australian kookaburra, from the squat-style toilets of Beijing to the particular wilderness of a North Carolina Costco, we learn about the absurdity and delight of a curious traveler's experiences.

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.

Jane Eyre

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.

Light in August

An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle - and people in general - has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands.

The Graveyard Book: Full-Cast Production

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack - who has already killed Bod's family…

David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall

If you are driving, pull over. If you are at work, close your door, unless you don't mind your colleagues seeing you doubled over, in tears, on your office floor. With this recording, taped before a delirious sold out audience at Carnegie Hall, you are there as David Sedaris performs new stories from his upcoming book. A parrot who mimics an ice maker, lovers quarreling over a rubber hand, and a Santa Claus who moonlights from his job as bishop of Turkey, the cast of characters is like no other.

Middlesex

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality

It's surprising that the term "heterosexuality" is less than 150 years old and that heterosexuality's history has never before been written, given how obsessed we are with it. In Straight, independent scholar Hanne Blank delves deep into the contemporary psyche as well as the historical record to chronicle the realm of heterosexual relations - a subject that is anything but straight and narrow.

Breakfast with Buddha: A Novel

When his sister tricks him into taking her guru on a trip to their childhood home, Otto Ringling, a confirmed skeptic, is not amused. Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he'd planned. But in an effort to westernize his passenger---and amuse himself---he decides to show the monk some "American fun" along the way.

Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir

Stan Lee - comic book legend and cocreator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Incredible Hulk, and a legion of other Marvel superheroes - shares his iconic legacy and the story of how modern comics came to be. Lee is a man who needs no introduction. The most legendary name in the history of comic books, he has been the leading creative force behind Marvel Comics and has brought to life - and into the mainstream - some of the world's best-known heroes and most infamous villains throughout his career.

Publisher's Summary

David Sedaris's beloved holiday collection is new again with six more pieces, including a never before published story. Along with such favorites as the diaries of a Macy's elf and the annals of two very competitive families, are Sedaris's tales of tardy trick-or-treaters ("Us and Them"); the difficulties of explaining the Easter Bunny to the French ("Jesus Shaves"); what to do when you've been locked out in a snowstorm ("Let It Snow"); the puzzling Christmas traditions of other nations ("Six to Eight Black Men"); what Halloween at the medical examiner's looks like ("The Monster Mash"); and a barnyard secret Santa scheme gone awry ("Cow and Turkey").

No matter what your favorite holiday, you won't want to miss celebrating it with the author who has been called "one of the funniest writers alive" (Economist).

What a tradition-- right up there with "It's a Wonderful Life," "A Christmas Carol," and "Christmas Vacation". Many Christmas stories are sugar sweet, but, if you like a little spice with your sweet, include David Sedaris in your yearly holiday experience. "The Christmas Elf' is one of the funniest, most irreverent, and most memorable of listens.Sedaris may not be for everyone, but if you sometimes appreciate the cynical side of holiday cheer, try this. And do it for his absolutely unique, creakie little voice!

If you're not ready for Department Store Christmas Carolers or Mall Santas, plug Holidays On Ice into your ears. Sedaris generally does an excellent job of pointing toward the madness of the holidays, without feeling like a Grinch.

The opening story "The SantaLand Diaries" is about Sedaris working in a Department Store as an elf, and if you've ever experienced a certain frustration (along with Charlie Brown) about the commercialization of Christmas, or Christmas being pushed on you, this story is a can't miss.

The rest of the stories weren't nearly as much fun for me. "Seasons Greetings" and "Christmas Means Giving" in particular ended felt overly mean and cruel.

That said, others, like "Dinah, The Christmas Whore," and "Six to Eight Black Men" were genuinely amusing. I wouldn't call "Monster Mash" fun, but it was incredibly well written.

(There are more stories in this edition than in the previous version. Personally, I think the additional stories are welcome.)

I suspect, like "A Christmas Carol," I'll make listening to "The SantaLand Diaries" and some of the stories an annual tradition.

I had tickets to see David Sedaris and I was brushing up on some of his older books to refresh my memory beforehand. As always, a delightful listen. I've read all of his books, but I much prefer listening to him read them. The very best part of this book is that he sings in the voice of Billie Holiday. It's one thing to read the story and the words say, I sang a commercial jingle in the voice of Billie Holiday. It's a whole other thing to actually hear him sing a jingle like Billie Holiday. Brilliant!!!

I'm a huge fan of David Sedaris and would recommend all of his books. And if you have a chance to see him perform, even better. Not only is he funny, he's also very nice. When he signs your book, he looks directly at you and asks you questions, then writes something personal just for you. When I saw him recently, he stayed and signed books until one in the morning. He looked exhausted, but he was gracious and engaging.

As the title proclaims I love Sedaris. I find his humor engaging and insightful. I will take on anything with his name on it. Lucky for me, his books have been wonderful. He is subtle and droll. I do not know who to compare him to. Try one of his books. I think you will love his stories. He reads his own material. He has an engaging voice and is one of the few who I think are able to read their own material to good effect. Usually my heart sinks when I see that the author is reading the book. Not so with Sedaris. His reading is part of "the act."

I enjoyed listening to this book, but I was looking for an ROFL experience, and although it was funny, I never quite laughed out loud. Sedaris is an excellent writer/performer, but I don't consider this his best work. If you are looking for a real LOL experience, try Me Talk Pretty One Day (my PF), or When You Are Engulfed in Flames. With that said, I did find this book entertaining, that is except for the last part written by his sister. It just got old in a hurry.